"It will help," said Michael Roy, president of Blue World Information Technology, a Vancouver-based e-business integrator. "It is the interoperability and scalability that makes the Tivoli solution so important."

Tivoli Risk Manager enables enterprises to centrally manage data produced from security products such as firewalls and antivirus software as well as other systems affecting security, such as Web servers and routers.

Tivoli Risk Manager "gives the customer a central, holistic view of their enterprise security," he said.

The software already supports products from vendors such as Check Point Software Technologies, Cisco Systems, Symantec and Internet Security Systems.

Roy said the security industry has come up with a lot of different individual products, and Tivoli Risk Manager provides an enterprise solution to help administrators make sense of all the data produced by the products and helps them focus their efforts.

Cole said IBM will continue to extend Tivoli Risk Manager's interoperability. IBM's Tivoli development is based here.